Beaded Butterfly

[keaalu]

Beaded Butterfly
I made this a few days ago, for my Mum's birthday, so now it's safe to upload it. :) It's supposed to be a handbag charm (or similar) hence the little lobster clasp on the top.

It's based on the malachite butterfly, which is one of my favourites - technically, the brown and green is the pattern on the underside of the wing, the top is a rather more dramatic black and bright green, but I prefer the underwing colours.

When you pick it up, the wings fold up like on an actual butterfly; I'm not sure if it was intentional. XD (The instructions on how to make it were in a book, but I didn't follow them too closely. It was probably not intentional, all their examples lay nice and flat.)

I spent ages charting the pattern for this, and of course, the fact it's not "traditional" beadwork like peyote means the pattern didn't come out like I'd charted. Drat.

Edit: this was a bit of a "rough and ready" post before I headed out to work this morning, as I wanted to see how it looked when I set my LJ to crosspost automatically (to Facebook and Twitter), but I think the only thing it crossposted PROPERLY to was my Twitter. I can't even see it on Facebook, except that there's a mysterious reference to me somehow being in Colchester recently. ¬_¬ I've tidied it up now, I think.

Edit2: I just crossposted this to the craftgrrl LJ community - I've never posted there before, and it just took me about 45 minutes of editing and changing and editing and rewriting to pluck up the courage to actually click POST. XD

I'm such a coward. This is part of the reason why I never commission people, even when they're offering free drawings - I get shy and awkward about saying "OOH ME, MEME, PICK ME, NIGEL", and end up chickening out.

Edit3: Haha. I just realised: it's Whitesides, in butterfly form.